The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
I have not had much luck with getting some reasonable hand-held stacked images of live insects. This one is OK, but lacks an ideal BG and perch. I did remember to leave some room along the edges for cropping out some of the artifact riddled areas that cannot be fixed. The dragonfly was perched low to the ground and used my elbows to steady the camera while shooting.
Feedback Requested
There’s probably a few artifacts that I missed, but I would like you to evaluate the details present on the subject. I might be tempted to remove the light-colored piece of debris on the prothorax of the subject. Thank you for looking.
Processing software: Zerene Stacker (12 image Stack PMax) Lightroom Classic
Major adjustments: DeNoise before stacking, Levels
Blending/stacking: Zerene Stacker 12 images PMax with artifact editing
Other notes: I reloaded the composite image into Lightroom for image rotation and finished contrast adjustment with curves and final cropping for a symmetrical composition.
The detail looks fine to me, Jim,and i don’t see any obvious stacking artifacts. We just finished judging for our county fair on Sunday and there were twenty-eight images in the macro category. To my mind, if this had been entered it would have been at the top of the heap (and one of mine was in there). I could see doing a touch of clean-up and maybe trying to remove the bright piece of vegetation growing out of the left eye, but this image has very high impact, so those details aren’t all that important.
Fascinating image with exceptional processing. Looks really good to me and I don’t see any artifact either. I can imagine how hard this would be to pull off with a moving bug at least the stacking part of it.
Jim, almost perfect. I’d remove those parallel lines just above the left wing. I’m not 100% sure the hairs on the left side of the prothorax are in focus - would one more shot from the stack improve this? I always love the stained-glass look of a dragonfly’s wings, and your macro really brings that out here. The busy BG affects it a bit, but in a way it helps to emphasize some details, so I’m OK with that. Overall, a beautiful close-up showing great skill.
Wow Jim, really nice close up showing the detail and beauty of the wings and body. Some clean up could be done but I don’t see that as a must do given the fine nature of the dragonfly details and dominance in the frame. Great job on the stack too.
Jim, I find handheld stacks very challenging, because it’s hard to keep the camera motion to less than the focus change increment. This looks very good, showing lots of detail and especially capturing the translucency of the wings. It does look like the hairs on the thorax are soft while the legs below them are sharp. There’s also an light line above the tip of the right wing that looks like a leftover of that wing changing position, that’s can be easily cloned out.
Jim: Got a serious -meter spike from this one. And knowing that it’s a handheld (!!!) stack makes it even more awesome. Just a jaw dropping shot. >=))>
-meter spike from this one. And knowing that it’s a handheld (!!!) stack makes it even more awesome. Just a jaw dropping shot. >=))>